


the wicked truth

by kuro49



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Bottom Jason Todd, Consensual Underage Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 12:44:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14671377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: Nobody is keeping count even if they probably should.Or, Nightwing finds himself standing between the muzzle of Red Hood's gun and the scum of the earth, and in the blind spots of the city’s surveillance cameras, Red Hood says. “If it’s a hole you wanted, you could’ve just asked, Nightwing.”





	the wicked truth

**Author's Note:**

> this was never supposed to be this dirty but when do we get to write what we want?? title taken from glass animals' the other side of paradise which was also this fic's anthem.

 

“Stick your tongue out,” Dick says, “for me.”

And like with everything else, Jason does. The hot white streaks of semen that hits his tongue and cheek to drip down his chin is bitter, but that is familiar. He looks up to him, and this too is inevitable with his hand in his hair and his thumb smearing a line of come along his jaw. When he draws his tongue in, Jason pauses to make sure Dick is watching the swell of his Adam’s apple, and then he swallows.

The motion is significant enough to make his ears pop.

 

It is a natural progression, much like time.

His return to Gotham leads to many things, Dick attempting to recruit him back into the folds of the extended family is not supposed to be one of them.

“If it is heroes you are looking for, take your pick. There are more than enough good guys out here for you to choose from.” _Just not enough to make a difference,_ Jason doesn’t say even if he does say everything else on his mind. He is deliberate in his delivery. Because he means for it to hurt. “You don’t need me too.”

Like Bruce and all the replacement Robins to come. He has no use for him.

“Call me greedy then, Jay.”

They are both still in uniform, and Nightwing is breaking all the rules. Dick says his name like Bruce never left him for dead a second time, rubbing out that last line in the sand into a blur. It isn’t fair. It probably isn’t supposed to.

Jason wants to laugh something ugly right in his face because of course, Dick has never once fought a fair fight in his life.

"Trust me, _Dick_. I can call you plenty of choice words."

Jason wants to push the knife in and twist it too. Here is him and some kind of wishful thinking that this is what will make it stick. Relationships are nasty things when it comes to the truth. Giving in has never done either one of them any favours. Jason has no idea how much of an asshole they both have to be before Dick stops trying to pull this same old trick and Jason can finally stop himself from falling for it like he hasn’t seen this one for the hundredth time.

But it never really fucking is.

“We can survive all on our own, but we don’t have to.”

The plead is a little bit desperate and Jason isn’t quite sure Dick understands that he is preaching survival to someone like _him_. Jason wants to hollow himself out with a goddamn tea spoon if that is what gets him out of this conversation.

“Such pretty words from such a pretty bird.” If it is dirty Dick wants, Jason is hardly above using the same tactic right back on Dick. The secret to this life after death that he has is that he is never really all that far from taking a dip right back into the Lazarus pit. The bait is his blood in some shark-infested waters. It is easy to be pulled under. “I don’t know what you are waiting for. Make the first swing, I swear, it will make you feel better.”

Dick takes a physical step back. Jason knows this routine too.

The first boy wonder doesn’t take well to directions. This, Jason knows how to deal with.

 

Taking both wrists in one hand, Dick uses that as leverage to pull Jason flush against him, listening for that hitch in his breath as he takes him all the way in. Jason is filled, feeling full. His eyes go fluttering in a blink, blink, blink with every attempt to focus.  

"You still with me here?"

Jason doesn't reply immediately but that is to be expected, Dick waits with infinite patience, traces his finger along the bandages and the lacerations healing into scabs.

"Mmhmm," Jason’s mouth parts on a grind of his teeth, "I'm with you, big bird."

Halfway to oblivion and it is sweet.

 

Dick Grayson can hide the anger in him all he wants but they both know how it works. The original dynamic duo was a four-alarm fire with all the fuel needed to climb even higher. Dick has always had the temper for the ages and Jason has always had focus if nothing else.

Jason’s eyes glint green at the fond memories of a cool cave and another heated argument.

Robin has no idea why Nightwing still bothers coming if it ends the same every time. It is like watching a movie on repeat. Jason never interrupts, and he never presses pause.

He also resolutely does not flinch because it never comes to blows even if it does come close.

From where Jason is sitting at the ready in the brand new reds and greens of a Robin version 2.0, he watches the two of them at each other’s throat from the corner of his eyes. He anticipates the resulting damage and the drop in the temperature of the cave while he sits at the batcomputer with all the files pulled up to just the right villain of the week. He thinks it is part righteous anger on Bruce’s part, part justified rage on Dick’s, and a whole lot of misplaced words in this conversation they are choosing not to say.

Nightwing goes out on patrol being just that much more reckless, earns himself a black eye alongside of a sprained wrist, and that is just what Robin can see. Batman makes a takedown with a ruthlessness that has even a young Jason Todd with his eyes wide behind the domino mask. He knows this routine by heart to know how to step around it is what he wants to say but he doesn’t, not really.

On this rooftop, Jason takes a matching step back to step right into the direction of all of Dick’s rage if he’ll have him, settling his bones into a fighting stance. Jason is willing to give Dick the fight Bruce never would. Jason cocks his head, he beckons to him with a sharp little _come hither_.

“So, Dickiebird, what’s it going to be?”

All of his convincing arguments left unsaid, Dick strikes first.

 

Dragged out across rooftops and alleyways, it starts and stops between Nightwing’s patrol route and Red Hood’s careful plans.

Nightwing takes down Red Hood’s men and has the shipment he’s been waiting for gift wrapped for the GCPD to come collecting, citing it is nothing _personal_ when he stands next to Jason in the shadows just outside the reach of the flashing red and blue of Gotham’s finest. In the spirit of giving back just as good, Red Hood makes a kill shot from four buildings over and takes out a very bad man about to be placed into witness protection for the testimony he's made. The past tense here is important, there are some sins that cannot be atoned for, and this makes it all the better when this singular action throws one of Nightwing’s long-standing case file straight down the drain.

There are just as many nights that draw to an end with Nightwing standing between the muzzle of Red Hood’s unfired gun and the scum of the earth, and it is stalemates like these that find them in this predicament.

“If you want him dead, you’re going to have to shoot through me.”

In the blind spots of the city’s surveillance cameras, Jason lowers the barrel of his gun and Dick’s fist draw to an open palm.

“If it’s a hole you wanted, you could’ve just asked, Nightwing.”

Here is what they are playing for, and as much as it looks like he is giving in when he pulls the safety on and holsters his gun, it really isn’t. Jason shows off both hands like there are not a single knife up his sleeve. It might even be kindness when Nightwing touches a hand between his shoulder blades because even with his domino still in place, Dick reads his mind without another gesture.

"I'm not fucking you with nothing."

Jason reaches back, drags Dick's hand to the small of his back, presses his palm against the show of skin between shirt and pants to wait for Dick's own reactions. It is easy for Dick to work the underarmour up along his spine, but it is Jason's next words that has Dick's hands going south, dipping beneath his waistband to find skin and slick.

"Already did the hard part for you, Dickie."

Without the belt cinching tight, the only thing keeping Jason’s pants from dropping to pool at his ankles are the holsters around his thighs.

"Fuck." Dick bites out into Jason's ear when he finds him wearing nothing at all underneath the rough canvas of his pants, makes him wonder just how many nights out of the week Jason does this.

Jason is laughing, looking like the spoils of a war won by a very narrow margin. Willing to indulge Dick on some very specific kinks now that he isn’t trying to drag him back to Bruce’s feet at every turn of conversation. "Yeah, that's the point."

He grinds back into Dick’s hand, whines quiet and low when Dick takes him at his words, pulls his fingers out to place them against the jutting bone of his hips. Dick takes hold of him, digging in with his fingers and sinking in with his cock, opening the hot wet heat of him the rest of the way with one easy push.

The two of them have always been far more predictable than they'd like, they both find themselves more than prepared for a situation like this or two.

 

Jason makes a mistake somewhere between Batman and Roman Sionis.

It is a stupid one and he thoroughly deserves the world of pain he is in for even with the contingency plan built into his contingency plans. Turns out he can make every plan out there and still be unprepared for how the world doesn’t seem to like him at all ( _oh_ the surprise there). Cutting too close and reacting on base instincts, Jason loses his footing in between the cracks of plan B and C, ends up on his ass with another perfectly good helmet _gone_.

He opens his mouth, ready to buy time for a miracle that isn't quite waiting in line to save his life and loses his ready words to a scowl when the drop of black and blue comes between him and almost certain death. He is ungrateful, maybe, but this is still the life and death and life of Jason Peter Todd and Dick Grayson doesn't get an entrance this cool in it.

“Hood.” Nightwing says, twin escrima sticks extended to the side as he stands with his back to Jason. The tip of his head, the cock of his hip all says ease in a way that can't really be easy at all. “You okay there?”

Tasting copper in his mouth, Jason bites out between his teeth and a fresh wave of pain. “Better than ever.” 

Easing himself down against the cracked tiles of this wayward roof, Jason lies down in temporary horizontal defeat. He breathes out in a single long exhale to expel the need to simply close his eyes, slows down his breathing to follow every dull thud of Dick’s fist against the million and one minions of another very bad man.

 

He leans in to track a trail of biting kisses from knee to thigh, all the way up on the inside, high enough to guarantee that he will have Jason feeling the bruises rub together for days as he walks.

"Barbaric much," say Jason, arching into it as Dick digs his teeth into the tender flesh.

Dick pulls off and back only to dig his thumbs into the skin, he murmurs the truth only because neither one of them wants to hear it. Dick has grown up enough to learn to be the bad guy sometimes, they can both play at this misdirection if it means they can drag this out.

“Y’know you love it.”

 

The slick crunch of bone accompanies every grunt and painful yelp. The crackle of electricity from those escrima sticks is deafening. Jason has no idea how he should feel about this because cruelty is not in the golden boy but retribution very much is.

The silence is what has him blinking his eyes, slow.

One second there is the dark Gotham skies without the stars. All the light pollution in the world could not get a turn in this city of theirs, and the next, he is looking up at the fall of black hair and the white out lenses of Nightwing’s domino mask.

“You okay there, little wing?”

The man asks like his answer is about to change. It isn’t.

“Like I said—”

“Better than ever?”

Jason flexes his fingers, refuses to curl them into fists.

It takes him seconds, but he sits up all on his own, heaving a strain over the wreck of this body and probably reopening half a dozen cuts when he made a crashing exit out of that window. He doesn’t see the wrench of Nightwing’s gaze from the taut pull of his shredded leather jacket across his shoulders or the efficiency to the brutality of the take down. He doesn't want to.

“Yeah, _that_.”

Nightwing laughs a second too long, and Jason wonders why it doesn’t hurt like it should.

 

He lets him take him home.

Hands around his waist, blue finger stripes holding him firmly against his side. Jason lets it happen once. Dick allows it to happen twice. They are both in the wrong.

Three, four, five times, and he loses count like they both do.

 

It ends badly, like with most things Bat.

Jason hates being kept, hates it even more that Dick makes himself his keeper. His injury or three might have something to do with it but he doesn't have to hate this any less. He looks at his cases and the focus he needs from it. He looks to the legwork he cannot do and the air in the room goes stale around him.

The worn narrow couch in this safe house only makes him feel trapped when Dick joins him too.

It isn’t his fault, per se. But when is it ever the golden boy’s fault when the Robin who fell out of the nest is right here to be blamed.

“Quit that, Jay.” Dick turns to him with a scowl, pushes at his bare feet and his toes that dig insistently into his side only to have Jason doing it all over again. He turns and settles the full weight of his glare on him. “Stop aggravating your injuries and stay _still_. What are you, a kid?”

Without the helmet and the domino mask and everything that carves the Red Hood name into the Gotham streets, Jason just looks fucking delighted at this opening for a fight.

“Do the math, Dickiebird.”

Because here is the truth if any one of them slows down enough to think about it. And Jason is pretty sure Dick hasn't been thinking at all when it comes to him.

In the black wet dirt of the grave he claws his way out of and the green of the Lazarus pit that has him ticking to a very different tune, Jason pieces reality together in the aftermath of his death. He barely loses two years. Everyone else is thinking hard enough about everything else he’s done to remember this too.

He is seventeen years old when he comes back to Gotham.

 

"Messy," remarks Jason, on his back with Dick's come across the red bat insignia across his chest. They are barely undressed but maybe that is the point here when Dick is looking at him like he is taking back claim for something that was never his to start with.

Dick kisses him, open mouthed and heart bared, “you’re mine to clean up.”

He makes good on his promise.

 

Here in the present when all is said and done, there is very little room for regret between them.

Jason finds himself thinking that of course, this would be what Dick decides to fixate on of all things. For a very simple fact he’s never put much thought into, trapped doesn’t begin to cover the feeling that rises in its place.

“You were tiny, Jason.” Dick tells him, like that means a damn thing now. The change is jarring but so is coming back to life. Jason can acknowledge what Dick is saying but he doesn’t have to understand it. “You were smaller than Tim at his age.”

“So _what_ , Dickie?” Jason gets into every crack and crevices Dick has in his armour and looms over him for the very simple fact that he can.

Dick doesn’t answer, and it is that same infuriating thing that has Jason tied up into knots. He has no inclination to be what drives Dick to that point of anger, where the rage burns and burns until there is only regret remaining in its wake. Dick has a temper, Jason doesn’t know why anyone else is surprised by that. Jason grew up watching Dick fight his way out of the manor and Bruce’s life all together.

Jason is a great deal of many things already, he refuses to become this too.

He has no intention of becoming one more thing Dick Grayson regrets.

 

He sees Robin swing between two buildings, and objectively there is room for improvements in the way Robin doesn’t quite turn his body into the arc to gain that extra distance, but what stuns Nightwing is the size of that boy. Each and every time he sees how narrow the kid manages to defy death, it makes his heart stop.

Dick always makes sure Jason is upstairs before he starts.

“I can circle his wrist with two fingers, Bruce.”

Dick is seething and he lets it show when he turns on Bruce. He is nine, he watched his parents fall to their deaths. He is nine, he becomes Robin and there is some kind of hope he didn’t think he was still holding out on. It is easy to put this on Bruce too, one more thing on top of the very long list of resentments.

There is never supposed to be another him, especially not one like this very tiny child.

Bruce turns to him, and in the blank stare of the Batman cowl, here is that same argument in different words, each one biting all the same. Bruce tears into Dick without a hint of calculation or finesse, and Dick is more than happy to draw blood. In hindsight, Dick sees that for what it is, Bruce has never known what to do with him when he gets vicious and hurt.

These are the fights Jason is never a witness to.

These are the fights Dick is remembering now. His anger has never done him any favours except burn the bridges he’s ever bothered with building. He doesn’t want to be the one to light this match.

 

There are days the pit doesn’t come close to pulling Jason down, but he still ends up in the center of the bed aching to his bone. Here is what the user's guide to the Lazarus pit doesn't make clear, the fine print nonexistent. On top of all the other side effects, this is one even Talia could not foresee: the growing pains _hurt_. The pit does what it can with what it is given, and a fifteen years old boy with brain damage is not much.

“Little wing.”

Of every way his day could get worse, there is also Dick Grayson standing at his bedroom door like there isn't a perfectly good front door inviting him out.

Maybe time passes, and maybe it doesn’t, Jason is not counting even if he probably should. Jason had a plan for this, and the past tense here is important because Dick isn’t supposed to come back. Jason’s contingency has no place for this man. Dick doesn’t get to sound like he cares, alarm in the way he breathes out that name at the sight of Jason curled in on himself.

Dick keeps himself in place and doesn’t take that step forward.

If Dick’s heart can be broken, he thinks it might feel a lot like this. The yearning to shield and protect is years too late when he has a direct hand in the wreckage, it still feels a bit desperate like he is clawing into what doesn’t exist, digging his nails into what he doesn’t get to keep safe.

“It’ll go away on its own, it always does.” Like all things related to pain, this too shall pass. Jason believes with enough time, he can be put into a grave for good. Hope is a godawful thing, dreadful in its existence that takes root to grow and grow. “It’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“You cope very differently than I do.”

“I know.” Jason glances to him with laughter in his eyes and not a twitch to his mouth. He wants to be defensive because Dick doesn't get to walk away for weeks in some sort of guilt-ridden frenzy to atone just to come right back to him. “You like to break things.”

He doesn’t have to say, _here I am_.

Dick swallows back the apology Jason has no intention of accepting, wishing on every single one of his lucky stars that he can get up and walk away from this too. What is done is done. What he has done is, perhaps, unforgivable. But life is a series of things that cannot be undone. There is pride in the way of this, and a whole lot of wishful thinking on his part that they are not irreparable.

“What is it going to be, Jay?”

Jason closes his eyes and doesn't let his body uncurl like it wants to. He holds himself taut, like the long line of his grappling gun as he makes that swing. Jason knows Dick doesn't fight fair, but he didn’t think he would sink this low for him. Jason can feel Dick’s gaze settling over him.

Before Dick's ever thought to ask, Jason's choice has long been made for him.

"Let me have this."

He wants to land with both feet on the ground this time.

“Anything you want,” says Dick in answer.

They both do, badly.

 

He is seventeen, died once, came back once, in love all the same.

 

They are in his bed, panting into each other’s open mouths.

Jason grinds down, rubs their cocks together, smearing precum with every shift of his hips. His hair is damp, is curling at the ends. He is thinking, they both are, that sometimes they are all doomed to repeat the same mistakes. And if this counts, he will make the choice all over again. He doesn’t learn, not about this anyway.

“Come on, Dickie, don’t go soft on me now.”

Jason pulls back just far enough to work two fingers into himself, easy like he never is. His mouth is soft, is hot and coaxing where he is harsh, drawing harsher lines with his muscles everywhere else.

Dick reaches out and obliges when he pushes a finger alongside, feels the trembles that course through Jason bodily with just how close he is pressed up against him. Feels the thunder of his heart against his rib cage, feels that lightning shock in the way his eyes go half-mast, relaxing into the intrusion rubbing up against his walls.

“Does this feel soft to you?”

Jason laughs at the question, and it is a wonderfully wicked thing that Dick swallows right down.

 

The mission involves enough Bats to have him counting with both hands.

Jason has no idea what he is doing here while Dick is counting this as a win. There is blood on Red Hood’s leather jacket and blood on the blue of Nightwing’s uniform, flecks and splatters and not at all theirs.

“So,” he starts, slow like he is testing the water, waiting for danger that never comes, “this is what it feels like.”

“It feels pretty damn good, doesn’t it?” Dick asks, grinning.

“I wouldn’t take it that far.”

The two of them are atop a different rooftop in the same city they cannot escape from. Neither one of them are itching for a fight and maybe it is about time. Here lies personal growth. Dick takes a physical step towards Jason while Jason stands his ground. There is nothing easy about this, and that is precisely the point.

“Are you asking?”

Jason wants it to be clear that this is not a stalemate, it can be truce.

“It’s not just a hole I want.”

_It’s you_ , Dick doesn’t say, he doesn’t have to and that is what’s changed.

Jason laughs and it is crass but so is plenty of things the two of them have plans for until the sun comes up, “I think I can work with that.”

The night is dark, the stars are perhaps aligned in some funny way for them to end up here despite everything. He goes home with him, and there is something to that.

 


End file.
